


Narutostuck: By Which a Shattered World

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Series: Narutostuck [10]
Category: Homestuck, Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Human/Troll Society, Conversations, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Female Friendship, Fictional Religion & Theology, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Ninja, Partnership, Past Brainwashing, Prompt Fic, Revolution, Slice of Life, Storytelling, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-18
Updated: 2016-03-18
Packaged: 2018-05-27 12:59:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6285451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The battle for Kouin doesn't end with the assault on the Uchuukage's compound, but Jane and Roxy have enough downtime to get philosophical.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Narutostuck: By Which a Shattered World

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was written on 3/18/16 for a Tumblr anon, in response to the prompt: _While on the subject of narutostuck, Jane and Roxy ( & maybe Callie?) - repairs for the ficlet meme?_
> 
> I realize that I [previously said](http://edenfalling.tumblr.com/post/122545719475/what-if-narutostuck-cherubs-and-possibly) that there are probably cherubs living in the deepest desert, but on due reflection I don't want to do the legwork to turn them from an eats-galaxies-for-breakfast level of deus ex machina into a functional everyday species, so this AU will remain trolls and humans only. (And the possibility of carapacians across the western ocean.) But! That doesn't mean I can't have a little fun around the edges. :)

After the assault on the Uchuukage's compound, you find Roxy sitting on the cracked and soot-stained front steps of Kyokuchou-no-kami's shrine. The battle for Kouin is far from over, but even elite soldiers can't fight indefinitely without breaks for mental and physical rest and this district is well within the rebellion's current zone of control.

Even so, you disapprove of her choice not to tell anyone where she intended to go, nor how long she intended to remain there. Vanishing from her allies' awareness is both dangerous and irresponsible, and the rebellion cannot afford to lose one of its chief strategists to a poor choice made under the influence of sleep deprivation or prolonged stress.

(Losing track of your teammate also makes you feel a sick, swooping nausea that you refuse to acknowledge.)

So you tracked her down.

"Hey, Jane," she says without opening her eyes to look at you.

You sit beside her. The steps can hardly foul your uniform worse than it already is.

"Roxy," you say. "You forgot to notify headquarters where you intended to spend your downtime. We should report in before finding a more defensible location to rest."

"Mmm." She lets herself tip backwards until she's lying diagonally on the shallow steps, and stares up at the mid-morning sky, gray both with smoke and the threat of rain. "Did you know Kouin was founded around this shrine?" she says, rather than anything logically related to your own words.

You're growing accustomed to her non sequiturs. They seem to be a secondary manifestation of her ability to think around corners. Her casual assumption of friendship is less explicable.

You vaguely remember knowing her before Abyss. But that was twenty-five years ago and neither of you are the same people you were as children, so you don't understand why she places such weight on that arbitrary scrap of connection.

(You're grateful that she does.)

"That's not in the official histories," you say. And even if it were, you've never paid much attention to religion.

Your trident is heavy, and your fingers are sore from the force needed to wrench its tines free from the bodies of your targets. This district, you remind yourself, has been cleared for nearly thirty hours. The only people around are your fellow rebellion soldiers and a few civilians still detained (for their own safety) in underground emergency shelters. You set your weapon down within easy reach.

"There's a lot that isn't in the official histories," Roxy says. "But yeah, this shrine and Kirema-no-kami's shiny, huge-ass temple across the river go way, way back. It's just that death and destruction work better than plants and healing when you're trying to justify endless war and repression, so guess which god got all the repair funds over the years and which one got a guard reporting anyone who tried to leave an offering."

You turn to look at the dilapidated building: small and squat, its stones blotched by moss and lichen, paint peeling from its wooden doorframe, the basin at the foot of the goddess's weather-worn statue filled with rubbish instead of offerings or flowers. The disorder is aesthetically irritating. "That strikes me as a rhetorical question," you say.

"Yeah," Roxy agrees. "Here's another: did I ever tell you about the time I got lost in the desert?"

You shake your head, wondering what unknown factor connects this to her previous chain of thought.

"It was a long time ago, right after my first posting," Roxy says. "I got back from the war, they gave me two weeks to recover, and then bam, right into Intelligence trying to root out rebels and malcontents. Which turned out pretty useful in the end, but at the start I was just carrying messages around various outposts and bumfuck nowhere villages and keeping my eyes and ears open in case I found anything potentially seditious, or just profitable from a blackmailing point of view."

You nod. You've completed many missions based on intelligence gathered from similar sources. Some of them might even have been based on Roxy's own reports.

"Well, there I am doing a circuit between some ranches out on the edge of the badlands, and it turns out one of the families is up to their necks in smuggling -- I'm talking real illegal shit, all the way across the desert from Wind Country. And they notice that I've noticed, and they decide to make me disappear. So they knock me over the head while I'm trying to leave all polite-like, and haul me out into the actual desert to slit my throat."

"That sounds remarkably inefficient," you say.

Roxy shrugs. "Superstition, I think. Didn't want any death traces around for you creepy black ops types to sniff out or summon my ghost or whatever." She turns her head and smiles at you, tired and wry. "Abyss and the clown squad are sweet propaganda tools in all kinds of directions, you know? But anyway, my lovely captors misjudge their drug dose and I wake up while they're still arguing about how far away they have to get before my death won't look connected to them. And I have always been fuckin' _awesome_ at escaping."

That, you think, reflecting on the three times you attempted to capture or eliminate her before Abyss collectively decided the Lady had become unworthy of your loyalty, is closer to understatement than boast.

"Did you kill the criminals once you freed yourself?"

Roxy snorts. "What kind of question is that? Of course I did. Couldn't exactly _not_ and still look like a loyal soldier. Except it turns out that when you're in the middle of a trackless desert, killing the only people who know where you are and how to get out of that desert is, shockingly, not the most brilliant plan ever devised."

"True," you agree.

Something explodes to the west, near Execution Bridge. That is intolerably close to the rebellion's temporary headquarters.

You grab your trident and spring to your feet. You've had an hour to rest and regroup; you've fought longer in worse circumstances, and now of all times the rebellion _cannot_ afford to lose. Every soldier is needed.

You rush toward the renewed evidence of battle.

Or rather, you try to take a step, only to discover halfway through that Roxy has one hand locked around your ankle. Only a quick burst of chakra, bastardized from the standard tree-climbing exercise, saves you from falling ignominiously on your face.

"There is an entire army on-shift and ready to take care of shit like that," Roxy says. "Also I don't care about your conditioning or your creepy stamina vampirism thing. We've been fighting twenty hours straight and we need a fuckin' break. Sit down, Janey. I'm telling you a story."

You sit.

(Something inside your chest unwinds fractionally, relieved at placing your trust in someone else's authority instead of having to create your own orders. Something else winds tighter at this continuing evidence of your weakness.)

"So there I am in the middle of bone-dry nowhere, still kind of out of it from the drugs. Also kind of woozy from blood loss because there were four of them and one of me, and this is back before I switched specialties from long-distance ninjutsu to close combat taijutsu. And I can find west by watching the sun, but finding west isn't much help at finding water, or navigating the canyons and sinkholes in the badlands. I think I walked about three hours before I just fell down and couldn't get up, and figured I'd be dead by morning."

"You seem to have survived," you say.

"Yeah," Roxy says. She twists and looks toward the rotting doorway of the shrine, and the shadowed darkness within the small and battered building. "I saw her, you know. Kyokuchou-no-kami. I woke up in the middle of the night and everything still hurt like fuck but it didn't matter anymore because she was there. The whole world was all green and peaceful, and she was made of, like, vines and bones -- life from death, all symbolic and shit. She touched my head and said I was very brave, and that she was sorry but I couldn't rest yet because my story wasn't done. Then I stood up and walked another hour until I found one of the streams that runs into the desert to die. And I lived."

You don't believe in any gods. The Lady wanted all your reverence reserved for her, and when she proved unworthy, you had no interest in finding another idol who would only disappoint you in turn. But you hold your tongue and don't point out that Roxy's divine visitation was most likely a hallucination brought on by some combination of blood loss, exhaustion, heatstroke, and dehydration.

"I'm glad," you say instead. "The rebellion would be weaker without you." You pause, then add, "I would be weaker without you."

"Aww, Jane." Roxy squeezes her fingers, still wrapped around your ankle. "You made it through Abyss and came out only a _little_ crazy. You chose to do the right thing instead of the easy thing, and you keep choosing that every day. All I ever did was lie a bunch and let both my kids get chewed up by this fuckin' war. I'd be a lot more of a mess without _you_."

There is something terribly sad in her eyes, all the sharp edges of her mind turned inward instead of outward toward the Lady's rule. You think you've seen its echo, sometimes, when you catch a glimpse of your own face sidelong in mirrors: the knowledge that your life is broken and somehow you're the one at fault.

She should never look that way.

You let your own hand fall to rest lightly on her wrist. "Well. We are partners. And if you want help restoring the shrine after Kouin is ours, I'll help."

Slowly, Roxy smiles.


End file.
